1. Growing Up
As a kid I remember my older brother and sister always playing music in our house. My brother was big on jazz music and hip hop, so one minute he’d be playing Marcus Miller then the next Public Enemy. PE and A Tribe Called Quest in particular were his faves. My sister was into all the R&B of the time – Bobby Brown, Bell Biv DeVoe, Janet Jackson… I loved all that stuff, they unintentionally shaped my tastes at an early age.
2. Inspirations
Snoop – Doggystyle; Mobb Deep – The Infamous; Outkast – Aquemini; Jay-Z – The Dynasty; 50 Cent – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’; T.I. – King; Kanye – Graduation. All those albums are signposts for me whenever I wanna remind myself of what I dig about music.
3. Your Crew
My crew is Fire & Ice, who did the majority of production on my records, and The Daylight Robbery, who are the band that play my live shows. We do what we want.
4. The Music You Make
In simplest terms I just wanna make cool hip hop music. Hip hop is inherently cool, that’s always what attracted me to the genre as a kid – I never liked the gimmicky or corny stuff. If you look at the albums I listed as inspirations you get an idea of what I draw from and try and put my own spin on.
5. Music, Right Here, Right Now
I like the music scene right now. With the internet the way it is artists can get around a lot of the gatekeepers, make the stuff that they’re into and actually find their audience. I feel like there’s more hip hop music and artists that are actually good that are being commercially accepted than there has been in years.
David Dallas plays Beach Road Hotel with DJ Secretwpn on Friday December 20.
